C. Brittain - Voima

Roric, much less gentle, gave them both a hard push. “Get away! Now!” The first of Eirik’s warriors had reached the base of the ridge and were coming fast up the slope. There was another great bellow from the dragon. Karin, running and dragging Valmar with her, caught a flash of lightning from the corner of her eye. Would the Hearthkeepers and their swords, with the help of the Wanderers and the last of their power to shape this realm, be able to stop the dragon?

And if not, even if they made it safely into the faeys’ burrows, would mortal realms even still exist on the other side?

Roric, behind them, shouted defiance at Eirik’s men. Karin reached the lip of the little cliff and swung over the edge. Valmar, more clumsily, followed her. She lowered herself downward as fast as she could. At the bottom of the waterfall the water poured into a stream that ran back to a pool, inside a limestone cave.

For the first time in her life, Karin felt no hesitation about a rough, enclosed tunnel. This was not merely safety for her; this was safety for Valmar.

At the top of the cliff above them came the clang of steel on steel. Then Roric came down in one long leap, landing lightly next to the water. He barely glanced toward Karin and Valmar, who were scrambling back into the cave, but tossed back his hair and grinned, looking up at the warriors above them.

Without a final word for him, without a final kiss, Karin plunged into darkness. She had seen his face, alight with a berserk fury mingled with joy, and her heart turned to ice.

Valmar seemed to recover from his blank apathy as they crawled, side by side, into blackness. “There are faeys near my father’s castle? And we may be in their tunnels?”

But Karin did not answer. She was listening to the shouts and the sounds of battle behind them. Eirik’s men too must have come down the cliff. Unless Roric retreated into the cave, he would be hopelessly outnumbered, captured or killed-and she did not think he planned to retreat.

It seemed as though they had crawled a very long time, on a surface that now felt smooth under hands and knees. Karin realized the stream no longer ran beside them. She paused and lifted her head, listening, but now there was only silence behind them. Her eyes ached from trying to see in darkness, and when she first saw the green glow ahead of them she thought it was her imagination.

But it disappeared when she closed her eyes, then reappeared when she opened them. The rift between the realms of voima and mortal lands was open.

“I hear something back in the tunnels! But nothing can be back there! Roric came through there. I don’t like Roric. He brought a horse in here and took Karin away.”

She started to laugh, then realized tears were streaming down her face. “It’s all right!” she called in a voice she was not able to make cheerful. “It’s me, Karin! And I have my little brother with me.”

The oak woods near Hadros’s castle appeared unchanged as Karin and Valmar emerged into the cool evening air. The chaos of which the Wanderer had warned had not reached mortal lands-or not yet. They would know that the dragon had destroyed the powers of voima if the sun did not rise again in the morning.

It was a shock to be back, without any period of transition, to a world so familiar, and here Valmar seemed even more fully grown and muscular. Karin felt almost emotionless, as though this final shock, on top of all her recent experiences, had driven all feeling from her.

As they stumbled through the woods toward the castle she told Valmar about their long trip to reach him, about Hadros’s pursuit of them, and about King Eirik. She told him of the dragon’s den and the cave of the Witch of the Western Cliffs behind it, of the Witch’s hope that the Wanderers and Hearthkeepers might somehow be reunited, and of their conversation with the Wanderer. All she kept quiet was the price the Witch had extracted from Roric-and the fear that he was her brother.

Valmar grunted in response as though listening but asked her nothing. Karin realized as she spoke that she was telling it as though it were a story, someone else’s story, and this time might somehow have a different ending.

She listened for any sign of the troll as they walked, not knowing how she would deal with meeting it at this point, unsure she would even bother to try escaping. Valmar had very little to say about his time in the realms of voima, not even how he had become separated from the Wanderers and ended up with a Hearthkeeper.

She had wondered in a daze if she and Valmar, like Roric, had returned from immortal realms invisible, but nothing of the sort seemed to have happened. Dag and Nole were stunned to find them hammering on the castle gates, unaccompanied, filthy, and unable to give any clear answers to their questions. But the serving-maids recovered from their surprise enough to obey Karin’s orders, bringing them bread and ale and the last of the evening’s stew.

Firelight, ordinary, comforting, firelight, flickered through the hall. It must be, Karin thought, because Roric had been with the third force rather than the true lords of voima that he had returned to mortal lands not fully himself.

The household assembled at the far end of the room to watch Karin and Valmar, the maids and the housecarls whispering together. His younger brothers tried to stay quiet and let them eat, but they could not keep themselves from asking questions. Karin told them sharply that they would hear the full story the next day, and Valmar said nothing at all, but that did not keep one or the other from suddenly bursting out with a new question.

“Where have you been all this time?” “Did you see Father?” “Where is your ship? Or your horses?” “Have you had adventures? Did you get into any fights?” “Where is Roric?”

Karin, almost too tired to eat, leaned against Valmar’s shoulder. It was strong and solid, reassuring. She wanted to comfort him and protect him, but it came to her as she closed her eyes sleepily that he might also be able to comfort her.

Dag dared another question. “Are you two married now?”

Both Karin and Valmar jerked up at that. “No,” she said shortly, awake again. What had Hadros told his sons?

Delighted to have at least one answer, Dag tried again. “You left with Roric. Where is he now? Is he still alive? Did Father catch him?”

Karin slumped again, her face against Valmar’s arm. Emotion rushed back into her, replacing the numbness which she realized was all that had let her keep moving these last few hours. “King Hadros captured Roric,” she said indistinctly, “but he escaped. He escaped to rescue me. And now,” she fought unsuccessfully against a sob that threatened to choke her as the full realization hit her of what the silence behind them must have meant, “he has given his life to save Valmar and me.”

Valmar jumped up. “Out!” he ordered. “Everybody out!”

The serving-maids and housecarls took one look at his face, stern and suddenly very like his father’s, and made for the door. Dag and Nole hesitated in surprise. “You too,” Valmar snapped. Nole began to ask something more, but Dag took him hastily by the arm and dragged him away. Valmar bolted the hall door after them.

He turned back to Karin, who was weeping now in good earnest. She had pushed away her half-finished plate and had her head on the trestle table, her face hidden by her russet hair.

“He’s dead, he’s dead!” she wailed as Valmar gathered her up in his arms. “I escaped to the faeys and left him to die!” She clung to him, sobbing, as he patted her back.

“Karin, dearest Karin,” he found himself murmuring. “Please stop crying. He would not want you to mourn. He loved you. We shall make a great story and a song about him tomorrow so that his name will always live.”